ALFRED PAULTON'S WALK.
It was now pitch dark. The rain rushed downward through the still air
in overwhelming sheets. Through the leafless trees it fell with a
shrill, constant hiss. On the open road it beat with a loud dull
rolling sound, sometimes like the dull murmur of distant traffic,
sometimes like, the distant roar of a mighty concourse of people.
Out beyond the lamps of the town there was not a glimmer of light
to be seen anywhere. If one turned one's face upwards, the source
of the rain seemed not to be more than a few feet overhead. If one
turned one's face to the ground, a thick heavy vapour, born of the
shattered drops, rose warm against one's mouth and eyes. There
was no noise abroad but that of the incessant deluge. If it had
abated or increased, one would have thought it was the result of a
thunder-storm. But it did not alter in character or decree. It was a
constant torrent, not a fitful flood.
It was between six and seven o'clock when Alfred Paulton found
himself walking on a lonely road under this fierce downpour. How he
got there he did not know. He had a confused memory of what had taken
place within the past few hours. He had no clue whatever to where he
now was. He had no more than a blurred image of the scene in that
low, dingy, ill-lighted room at the "Wolfdog Inn." Even when Mrs.
Davenport was giving evidence his attention had been but feebly
aroused. He had felt drowsy, jaded. He then told himself that it
would be much better for him to go home and have some rest and sleep.
He had been without proper sleep for three nights. He had been too
much excited to get to sleep soundly, and when for a time he fell
into an uneasy doze, he had awakened with a shudder and a start from
some dire form of nightmare, in which familiar forms and faces had
been cruelly jumbled in hideous events.
But on this unknown road, and now, after wandering he knew not how
long, all at once he was smitten with a sharp impression of his
present situation. He moved his eyes this way and that in quick
anxiety. It is not possible to say he looked in the sense that
looking takes in objects by means of sight. He could hear and feel
the rain, and smell the heavy damp vapour rising from the ground,
from the flooded road at his feet. But if sight had been painlessly
taken from him at that moment, he would have been unconscious of
loss.
A feeling of desolation and infrangible solitude came upon him.
He paused in his walk and listened. His ears caught nothing but the
muffled hiss of the rain through the air, the angry-beat of it among
the leafless trees, and the slashing singing of it on the flooded
ground. The effect of it was an awful combination of the darkness of
the grave, an inviolate solitude, and a deluge lacking merciful power
to overwhelm.
He would have greeted any companion with joy. The society of the
humblest beast, the most abject man, would have cheered him almost
beyond the bounds of reason.
The completeness of his isolation was not due merely to external
forces combined with physical and mental exhaustion. The hollow
spaces of his imagination were filled with ghostly hints of an
unendurable crime. In the caverns of his thought was no pageant of
people or of things. No words or echoes of words sounded through the
dim, unexplorable vaults. Everywhere within there was the look of
sacrilege by bloodshed, the faint unendurable replication of dying
groans. The marks of a red hand were on all the walls, the last moans
of a murdered man filled the concave gloom.
He had heard that man Blake give his evidence freely, almost
jauntily. He had seen that other man lying dead in the disordered
room. As he had listened to the evidence of Blake, he had felt the
air about his head grow cold with awe, while his whole frame froze
with terror. All the people in the room where that accursed tale was
told believed instinctively that this man, talking with such odious
glibness, was a perjurer and an assassin.
Ugh! It was horrible--too horrible for a sane human being to dwell
upon! He would give all he had in the world to be able to banish the
memory of the past few days from his mind. But a curse had fallen
upon him, and now no other event of all his life would stay with him
for one brief minute to keep him away from this awful scene.
When in that room where the inquest was held he had felt very cold.
Now he was hot, uncomfortably hot. This was strange; for there he had
been under cover, and there had been a fire in the room. Here not
only was he in the open air, but under a fierce downpour of rain.
Indeed it was one of the greatest storms of rain he had ever been out
in. The rain was useful in one way--it would cool him.
Ah, that was much better! To take off his hat and let the cool rain
beat on his bare head was a luxury--a delicious luxury. It was indeed
a luxury such as he had wished for in vain a little while ago; for it
not only took away the great, unaccountable heat from which he would
otherwise have suffered most severely, but, better a thousandfold, it
kept his mind from running on the events of a few days back, and this
day in particular. The effect of rain falling on his bare head was to
banish thought from the brain, and give the brain rest.
What an extraordinary thing the brain was! Awhile ago he had been
able to recall hardly any of the circumstances of the inquest; then
they all rushed into his mind, causing him great disquietude; and now
the mere falling of rain on his uncovered head had put him into a
wholesome and almost pleasant state of mind!
The heat was gradually getting less. Yes, there could be no mistake
about that. A few minutes since it seemed as though it would take
hours to reduce the temperature to the degree it had already reached.
Keeping the hat off was no longer necessary. In fact, it was no
longer comfortable to go uncovered. He would put on his hat.
He was wet through now--thoroughly wet. He must have been soaked
before that great heat came upon him. It was very extraordinary that
he should feel so hot while the water was absolutely running down
under his clothes.
Ah, a chill now! Unmistakably a chill, and he could see no sign of
human habitation anywhere--no place which could afford him shelter.
In fact, he could make nothing whatever out except the rain, and that
was revealed to him by the sense of touch, not by the sense of sight.
How cold the rain was, too! He had never felt rain so cold. The air
must then be twenty degrees colder than it had been a few minutes
ago. He had never until now experienced so sudden a fall of
temperature.
He was shivering, too. His teeth were chattering. How delighted he
would be to find any kind of shelter, and a good fire to warm himself
at! This was very lonely and wretched. He was hardly able to walk
now, and yet with his present chill anything was better than to
stand. The thought of sitting down was out of the question. No one
but a madman would sit down in such rain, and with clothes soaked
through. He had been miserably wrong to uncover his head for so long
a time. To that foolish act must be attributed this chill. Ugh! he
was barely able to stagger along. This was the most dismal night he
had ever passed in all his life.
But uncovering his head to the rain was not the only foolish thing he
had done this night. Had he not wandered sillily along some roads--he
knew not where--until he had lost his way? Now he was far from
lamplight--where he knew not; whither to turn he could not decide if
he had a choice. At present he every now and then ran up against the
hedge, and this was the only thing which told him he was walking on a
road.
He wondered what o'clock it was. When did he leave that dreadful room
where the inquest had been held? He could not tell, but it was the
moment Blake's evidence was over. The moment Blake moved from the
table at which the coroner sat, he had stolen away, and, he thought,
run a good while, until he was out of breath. How long that was since
he could not tell--could not guess.
Merciful Heavens! Suppose the night was yet young--suppose it was now
no more than midnight, or eleven, or ten o'clock--what was to become
of him? There would be no daylight until close to seven. Could it be
that he would have to wander on thus for eight or ten hours more? The
thought was absurd. He should drop down of exhaustion, of cold, long
before that time.
Cold! Why, what could be the meaning of this? Already the feeling of
cold was passing away, and he felt quite warm--very hot. This was an
improvement on the sensation a little while ago.
No matter whether he felt hot or cold now, this day had done him
one invaluable service. It had cured him of any romantic feeling he
had had for that strangely beautiful woman. Now all that had happened
in that room where the inquest had been held came back vividly to
him. Murder had been done, and there could be no doubt in the mind
of any reasonable man that Blake had done the awful deed, and that
she---- No, no; he mustn't think that even now. It was plain, at all
events, that Blake had once been loved by her, and there was nothing
to show that she was now indifferent to Blake. Had she not supported
his absurd theory respecting the death of the man who had been
murdered?
The heat was becoming bad again--worse than ever. His head was
burning. It felt as though a cap of tight-fitting metal pressed upon
it. The cold of a little time back was hard to endure, but it seemed
a positive pleasure compared with this awful sensation of bursting at
the temples. He must have relief some way, any way, no matter at what
cost in the future.
Off with the hat again. The rain did not cool so quickly or so
effectually, but it afforded great alleviation. There was no positive
sense of pleasure from it now--only a dulling, deadening of a feeling
which was not exactly pain, but gave rise to a helpless, lethargic
state of brain.
His limbs were heavier than they had yet seemed, and he had great
difficulty in persuading himself that the water which rose no higher
than an inch on the road was not tenacious mud half a foot deep.
Keep on thus for several hours! Impossible! One might as well expect
to walk for the same time on red-hot ploughshares.
Oh, he felt sick and weary beyond endurance! No light to be
seen--nothing whatever visible. And along this road no succour was
likely to come, while the rain poured down as though a second
destruction of earth by water was at hand.
What!--cold again so soon! Distracting! Maddening!
Ah, this was fever--fever of some awful kind--and no help at hand. He
could not keep on another hour. Bah!--not half-an-hour.
Merciful heavens, what was this? Lights and the sounds of horses and
the shouts of men!
He felt himself knocked down. With a prodigious effort he staggered
to his feet and cried out:
"Help!--for heavens sake, help!"
Succour had arrived at the last moment.